On October
21, NPR's Morning Edition ran a three and a half minute story on a particular
"side effect" of electronic signatures, those boxes one checks or buttons one
clicks to "show that you signed" an online document. According to a study conducted by Eileen Chou
and released by the University of Virginia, people are more likely to perjure
themselves via e-signatures than they are when they sign a document the old
fashion way: pen, paper, and ink. This is because, according to Chou, hand
written signatures tend to be "intimate representations of our identity."
E-signatures, on the other hand, allow "us to psychologically distance
ourselves from the promise that a signature is supposed to imply." 1 This
is hardly news to anyone who has fired off an email in a fit of anger or been
the victim of a cyberbully.

As bad as
we imagine a perjured e-signature to be, it is unlikely that such an act would
lead directly to murder. There is another use of signature, however, replete with
the same type of "psychologically distance," that does kill. It's called a
"signature drone strike." 2

The bizarre
nature of this method of murder is that the weapon and the one who wields it are
often separated by a "psychological distance" of six thousand miles.3
That distance is further compounded by the fact that in a "signature strike,"
the victims are not chosen by name, deed, or guilt, but by "profile." For
example, a signature strike in 2010 killed at least fifteen civilians traveling
in three cars in central Afghanistan because the drone's camera operator
identified "military aged males" when the party stopped alongside the road to
pray. "They're praying. They
are praying," he is recorded as saying. "This is definitely it, this
is their force "Praying? I mean,
seriously, that's what they do." 4 In 2013, a signature strike
carried out in Yemen killed 13 members of a wedding party. The "signature" of
their travel apparently mimicked an al Qaeda caravan. 5

Data
compiled from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows that between 2002
and 2014 in the nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, for every victim
specifically targeted for assassination by drones, twenty-eight civilians were
killed.6 While a 2012 New
York Times article titled Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's
Principles and Will reports that
the president often personally "signs off" of some drone strikes, it does not
make clear if his approval is verbal, hand written, or e-signed.7 Whichever method he employs, he does so from within the
walls of a fortress thousands of miles away from the victims. One has to
wonder, were we able to close that psychological gap, would the commander - in
- chief be willing to carry out the killings personally, not by pushing a
button but by pulling a trigger?